work

I’ve just sat here staring at the blank screen for a literal 5 minutes. I suppose I should put something down here. My partner and I are going to go do laundry today, but I have to be at work by 11:30. So we have a small window of opportunity and we’re seizing it. Of course, since I normally wake up at nine, I had to get up at 7 to be able to go through my normal morning routine. Not a fan.

I can’t really think about anything other than work this morning, so I suppose I can write about that. I’m not really supposed to talk about it on social media, but let’s just say it’s a multi-billion dollar fast food chain. That’s just vague enough, right? Anyway, I’m a manager there and it sucks. It really does. My store manager is over-worked and kind of mean. But, you know, I get that it’s hard to be a female in a top management position when the directors of operation and the head of maintenance are all male. They expect her to be hard, because that’s what management is to them. But I feel like if she would be more vulnerable with the crew sometimes, they would respect her more. I know that as soon as she was more open with me and told me how much shit she gets from our directors of operation for caring as much about her crew as she does, I respected her a little more.

I’m really of the opinion that positive reinforcement is better than negative reinforcement. I don’t think you should bully people into doing better. They may perform better, but in the long-run, they’re going to feel spiteful. If you are using what we call effective criticism, then you are building people up in the same breath as you are saying they still have work to do. Why wouldn’t you choose that kind of criticism every time? What’s the negative side to that? And it can be hard, so hard, to do that instead of snapping at someone and saying they screwed it up. But just like everything else you have to learn to be a manager, it’s going to take practice and patience. I think it’s better for everyone, honestly.